


i have two big hands and a heart pumping blood

by skywalkwithme



Series: someday we'll linger in the sun [4]
Category: Arthurian Mythology, Le Morte d'Arthur - Thomas Malory, Romans | Arthurian Romances - Chrétien de Troyes
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, BAD TIME, Blood, F/M, Rugby, Texting, bad bad, bad bad bad, french swears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21575557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skywalkwithme/pseuds/skywalkwithme
Summary: When he imagines her- when he imagines her. He imagines Salome. They learned about Salome in the basement of the church when he was little, a Sunday School teacher desperately trying to interest a bunch of tween boys by impressing upon them how cool and gory the Bible was. Salome, who danced and asked for the head of John the Baptist on a silver plate. Salome, her skirts snapping like whips, her feet stepping over the blood on the floor, her hair, shining, swirling in the air.He imagines her, hungry like that, pretty, hands grasping, eyes like steel, unbreakable. Asking for his head.His tongue reaches for the cut in his mouth, probes it. He tastes salt.
Relationships: Guinevere/Lancelot du Lac
Series: someday we'll linger in the sun [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1436425
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	i have two big hands and a heart pumping blood

**Author's Note:**

> tw for blood, violence, some self-harm. 
> 
> this is a loose sequel to the previous work in this series.
> 
> inspiration for this taken from Masoch / Lancelotism by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, which is a really excellent analytical academic article on the lancelot/guinevere relationship. i really recommend it (if you don't have access to a uni library i will literally send you a pdf, it's such a good analysis).
> 
> anyway. yeah this is real bad and unhappy. 
> 
> also they play a lot of rugby but i don't know? the rules to rubgy? and i didn't look them up, so if you actually know the rules of rugby, i'm sorry

bastard: I’ve rejoined rubgy 

gwenjamin: Oh shit?? Really

gwenjamin: Did u quit smoking FINALLY then

bastard: Yeah

gwenjamin: Oh thank god u smell like shit all the time

bastard: Hahaha

gwenjamin: This means u wont be around to make fun of arthur with me on the bleachers though D:

bastard: sadly 

gwenjamin: How could u do this

Bastard: my condolences

\----

gwenjamin: Did you hear lance rejoined rugby????

Arthur Pendragon: Yeah! I’m so excited XD

gwenjamin: STOP with the XDs i swear to FUCK

gwenjamin: But like okay why tho??

Arthur Pendragon: Why did he rejoin?

gwenjamin: Yeah

Arthur Pendragon: I don’t know. Maybe he missed it. It’s fun. 

gwenjamin: He like. Did so much to not be made to play anymore tho. Like i’m so sure he rolled his ankle on purpose last year so he could sit out playoffs

Arthur Pendragon: I know you think that. 

gwenjamin: Well

Arthur Pendragon: I don’t know. It’s not a problem? Not everything he does is a cry for help. He was really good at rugby

gwenjamin: Yeah i know

Arthur Pendragon: OK sorry but I have to go, I have to drive Parvizal to Costco for supplies for the fundraiser

gwenjamin: Ok have fun say hi to Parzi

Arthur Pendragon: OK will do!! Bye!!! Love you

gwenjamin: love u  
\---

Guinevere sits on the bleachers. It’s the first day of the new season, and they’re playing Cat Coit Celidon, a name that unfortunately lends itself perfectly to loud barking cheers.( CAT! COIT! CAT! COIT!) She’s sitting with a blanket over her lap and a thermos, and next to her are a number of loud CCC students, wearing green, the team colour. One has a glittery homemade sign. She regards them with disdain. To her, people who get excited about sports are just above adults who talk in baby voices to be cute, in terms of earning absolute zero respect from her.

Obviously this doesn’t apply to Arthur. Or Lance, now.

There they are, Winchester red and blue, shuffling out onto the white-lit field, breath puffing in the air. Arthur is there, first, drawing the eye even from so far away, his knees and face as red as his uniform in the burning cold. And there, next to him, Lancelot, tall and pale, black hair moving in the wind, body long and thin and graceful like a brushtroke. He’s saying something to Arthur, Arthur is nodding.

And then they’re off, bodies crushing against each other in a tangle of knees and elbows, green and red and blue, the ball popping above them like a skipping stone. To be honest, though her boyfriend and her best - her best friend- have played the sport for like, four years now, she has never learned any of the rules, or even if it’s scored by points or goals or whatever. She’s found that, whether she’s standing with Arthur’s arm around her shoulder at a party, or the team is sprawled on Arthur’s floor eating an industrial quantity of chips and dip, or Lance is sitting in the passenger seat on hour three of a six-hour Rugby Complaints rant, finds nobody has ever asked her a question about it, or expected her to know anything about it. So, no need to know. She has enough stuff to think about.

Arthur has the ball and is running like hell towards something. She watches, and then someone grabs him and he sprawls, and there’s a confusion of legs and boys, and then Lancelot is up, has it, is passing, and three guys knock straight into him and he goes down, briefly completely obscured by limbs. She sits up.

And he’s struggling up, but without the ball. A whistle, and they disentangle. Both Arthur and Lancelot have long tracks of mud down their sides. Lancelot stands up, runs briefly to the back, jogging around the centre of the action, looking for an opening.

So this is the other thing. She isn’t sure why Lancelot rejoined rugby, after spending almost all of his extra energy last year dodging his teachers, his coaches’, Arthur’s, his friends’, and his dad’s extremely intense efforts to get him to rejoin. And the fact that everyone just shrugged happily when Lancelot rejoined, completely without questioning his motivation to do this, is frankly a little alarming to her. She felt like she was in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something, when, after going through Arthur, Ban, Gawain, Bors, Gaheris, and Kay, every single one refused to join her in speculating why he just changed his mind and got swept along with the tide like this after a year, a YEAR, of struggling against it.

So it’s alarming. But also. She’s a little.. happy?

Because here she is, staring at Lancelot’s figure, his broad shoulders, his crazy hair, moving back and forth over the green, and she’s allowed, because everyone else here is too, watching as he runs, eyes on the game, hopping gently back and forth as the ball moves, pumping his fist in the air when they score (or get a point, or put it in the zone, she doesn’t know). Here he is, blue and red uniform, long gangly arms, the sharp curve of his jaw as he looks to the side, the flap of his shirt in the wind, his hands and nose red in the cold. And she can look, and she can look.

He gets plowed into again, goes down, face in the mud, and is up, arms pushing, shoulders heaving against one of the CCC players, and then he’s enveloped again by green uniforms. A podcast chatters in her ear, meaningless, and she presses her fingernail into her palm. Rugby is such a shitty sport, why does anyone play it, why does-

His knee jerks up, and he’s struggling out, knocking the ball sideways, and Arthur gets it and is up and the referee whistles. The Wincherster team stands up, jubilant, and Lancelot gets fully to his feet. They scored, she thinks. Lancelot swipes at his nose. Is he favouring one foot?

She can’t talk to them at intermission, they’re busy talking about strategy shit. 

How’s the game?? Isolde has texted her. 

I still fundamentally do not comprehend this sport, she texts back. 

So the rest of the game goes like this, masses of rugby boys smashing into each other with complete reckless abandon, Guinevere pinching her mouth as Lancelot sprawls in the cold mud. One boy hammers straight into him, head first, and he’s down, and then he lies, sprawled, for too long. 

People are calling things. “Call it, fucking call it-” shouts a boy from her Law class next to her.

Lancelot is up, and he’s yelling something. He points at the boy, and the boy, who has long sandy hair pulled back in a knot, gets up close to him, pushing his face in his. Lancelot is taller than him, and stares him down, slapping him challengingly on the shoulders and forearms, shoulders up, looking down at him, foreheads together. His rangy body is rigid with energy. The other boy pushes him, hard, and he falls back a pace, and then is lunging back up, before Arthur is there, his gold head in between them, pressing on Lance’s shoulder with his palm. 

The referee blows again, and they fall back into their teams.

“Come ONNNNN!” screams the boy next to Guinevere.. There’s general disappointment. A foul, or something, that wasn’t called. Arthur is saying something to Lancelot.

Then they’re back, playing again, and Guinevere realizes she’d been clenching her jaw.

Arthur’s team wins. .Lancelot gets a kick or does something with his knee at the last second, ball slipping in between two people, and then there’s a whistle blast and Winchester is standing up, shouting, crowding together, jubilant in blue. They slap Lancelot and Gawain grabs him around the neck in celebration. Lancelot’s shoulders are still up, his arms at his sides. 

Well, thank God, Guinevere thinks, sighing. It’s over. There’s a current of people down the bleacher steps, and she gathers up her things, holding up her throw blanket carefully so it won’t get stepped on. She pushes through the crowds, trying not to slip on the mud that’s tracked up even to the metal steps, and starts finding her way down to the field.

She pushes through a knot of people, and is down to the cut-up grass. Arthur is moving towards her, steaming like a horse. “Hey!”

“Hey, congrat-”

“You seen Lance?”

“What?” There’s a frown on his big blond face.

“He was just here, coach wants to congratulate him, he killed it, that pass... But he just wandered off, I don’t-”

“How did you lose him in like, the five minutes it took me to get down here?”

“I don’t know, but-”

Gawain tumbles up beside him. “DUDE somebody is fighting somebody by the equipment room one of the CCCs just told me HOLY SHIT-”

“Who?” Arthur says, already moving, Guinevere next to him, saying, “What? What?”

“I DUNNO I DUNNO.” Gawain says, jogging next to him. 

“Fuck, shit, fuck-” Guinevere is elbowing her way through muscled, sweating bodies. She knows, she knows, he’d better not-

In the middle of a shouting circle of boys and frantic coaches and rolling rugby balls there’s two mud-splattered bodies, one wrestling on top of the other, and for a moment Guinevere thinks, oh thank fuck it’s not him. Then a head yanks up, Lancelot’s black curls sticking to the side of his face, and he pulls his fist back and snaps it down into the other boy’s chin. The boy grabs the side of Lancelot’s face, fingers clawing, in his eyes and mouth, and pushes him down, on top of him now, cracking the side of his hand into Lancelot’s mouth. Lancelot makes a grunting, wet sound.

“GET HIM OFF!” Arthur thunders, striding into the mess and grabbing the sandy boy around the neck, and this pushes the shouting players into action, and they press in, pulling them apart, still kicking futilely in the air, the boy’s hand scrabbling a fistful of Lancelot’s shirt.

Guinevere stands, her blanket still clutched in her arms. Lancelot hangs from Kay’s arms, staring sullenly, blood streaming from his nose and mouth, mixing with the mud on his uniform. You can’t even see the blue anymore.

“What the fuck!” says Arthur, who never swears. This is startling enough to still the players into shamed quiet. He lets go of the sandy boy, who has one hand pressed over his eye. The boy looks dully at Lancelot.

“Come on! Do you want to be disqualified?” Lancelot is breathing hard still, and the blood in his nose bubbles.

“Apologize!” When nothing happens, Arthur throws up his hands. “Apologize, or I’ll get you both thrown out, I don’t give a shit. Lancelot, you too. Agravain, I know your parents, don’t try. We can’t do this kind of stuff, come on.”

The sandy boy- Agravain- sniffs.. “Apologize!” Arthur barks.

“Sorry.” Lancelot says. His teeth are red.

“Sorry.” Agravain forces out.

“Okay, there. Don’t do this shit again.” Arthur turns away, back to Lancelot. Agravain’s friends pull him away. 

The Winchester boys are clustered around Lancelot, chattering. “Give him space, give him space, we’re going home.” Arthur says, pushing them away. “We gotta go. Good game guys, good game. We’ll go over it tomorrow instead, alright, I’ll text you.” Lancelot’s head looks down, mud in his hair, hand up to his face where it’s bleeding. Guinevere hustles to keep up with them.

She grabs Lancelot’s limp wrist, and he looks down at her, a bright tongue of blood on his chin. She can’t read his expression.

“Hey, babe, there’s band-aids in the car, kay? I gotta talk to the coaches, Ill be there soon.” Arthur says, and touches her shoulder. Behind them, the two coaches for the teams are waving clipboards.

Lancelot says nothing as they push through the crowds outside the bleachers, everyone turning to stare, eyes wide and alarmed, at his face. She keeps her hand curled around his wrist, leading him, and his hand hangs heavy in hers.

She unlocks the car, her hands shaking a little, and he stands there, like a lost child, watching her.

“Sit down.” she says, and he does without arguing. She sits down in he passenger’s seat next to him, and digs through the mess of receipts, homework, Fruit Roll-Up wrappers, and general waste for the ratty first-aid kit Uther gave Arthur when he gave him the car. There’s a hanful of bandaids in it, the size of her thumb, and a crackable heat pack, a bottle of water, a little antiseptic alcohol. It’s mostly used up.

Beside her, Lancelot sits, staring at his hands, hunched. God, say something, she wants to yell at him. Say something so I can be mad about it. She turns around, gropes awakwardly through the back seat, and comes up with a clean-looking athletic towel. She tips a little alcohol on it.

“Turn your face.” 

He turns, and she takes his jaw carefully in one hand, using the other to sponge off the worst of it. 

“Ah.” Lancelot says.

“Don’t be a baby.” she says cruelly.

He says nothing, just looks down, eyes almost closed under his thick black lashes, as she cleans his face, holding the fine slim bones of his chin carefully in her palm.

“What the fuck.” she spits.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to- You didn’t do anything to me.”

He opens his mouth to let her wipe at his lip, It’s cut, and his jaw tenses under her hand when she swipes over it. His teeth are still bloody.

“Open your mouth more.” He does, and she tilts his head. “I think you cut the inside of your mouth on your teeth.”

He doesn’t say anything, head turned down. 

“Open your mouth a bit.”

Later, Arthur comes back, and she can tell he’s furious, but he talks to Lancelot with calm understanding, touching his shoulder. They drive him home, and she watches him walk up the steps to his house, his father a formidable shadow in the doorway. Lancelot’s shoulders are high, shrugged, and his new uniform is crusted with dried mud.

Arthur pulls out, and drives halfway down the street before he stops, leaning his forehead very carefully against the steering wheel so the horn doesn’t go.

She looks at his tousled hair. “Fuck.” he says into the wheel. “I thought this would be a good idea.”

She sits, staring, out at the blowing snow. 

He turns sideways, looks at her. “How is he doing?”

Arthur’s face is pinched. She has no idea what her own face is projecting. She tries to shape her mouth into a concerned form. She feels very far outside her own body.

“I don’t know.”

“If even you don’t know, we’re in trouble.” he says, and laughs hollowly.

Guinevere sits in the car, her hands folded in her lap. Under her thumbnail there is blood.

Arthur sighs, deep and weary. “I thought this would help.”

“Yeah.”

Arthur looks at her, sucking his teeth, and she stares out at the snow. She can feel his body vibratign with the need to ask her about the secret she’s keeping.

Like she would tell him. Like it’s a secret.

But Arthur is a gentleman and a good friend and does not ask. He drives her home, and opens the door for her, and waits in the driveway until she’s inside.

When the door closes behind her and leaves her in the dark empty hallway of her house, she raises her thumb to her mouth and chews. 

\------  
So it's like this.

Or, donc, c'est comme ca, as his father would put it, who never bothered to learn English after almost twenty years outside Quebec, still only a few phrases with the thick, deep slur of small towns and rutted roads and nationalism on them. Stubborn shithead.

Lancelot has inherited his black hair, and his deep-set eyes, and his love of the Habs, and his stubbornness. And also possibly lactose intolerance but he is choosing to ignore that currently. Which might be a part of the stubbornness thing. 

They're sitting in the principal's office, Lancelot translating into French around the cut in his mouth, as his dad whispers "Calice... calice...", frown imprinting into his face like a can being crushed by deep-sea pressure. Lancelot stumbles through his various offenses.

1\. Smoking on school property

Je fumais a l'exteriur.

2\. Poor attendance 

Je ne me présente pas à l'école.

3\. Drugs (cannabis)

Le... uh, weed.

4\. Fighting

J'ai combattu ce batarde en CCC.

His dad's frown grows deeper and deeper, curly hair prickling with rage. "Calice... calice..."

Calice means, in the most literal sense, chalice, though in the most figurative sense, it means damn it. Quebecois swears are the religious-est kind of swears you can imagine. 

Guinevere thinks this is cool. "Gnarly as shit." she’d described it. "Teach me another one."

He touches his mouth, runs his hand over the cut on his lip.

When he imagines her- when he imagines her. He imagines Salome. They learned about Salome in the basement of the church when he was little, a Sunday School teacher desperately trying to interest a bunch of tween boys by impressing upon them how cool and gory the Bible was. Salome, who danced and asked for the head of John the Baptist on a silver plate. Salome, her skirts snapping like whips, her feet stepping over the blood on the floor, her hair, shining, swirling in the air.

He had sat on the floor, and read the paper photocopy, complete with grainy illustrations. Caravaggio, rendered in harsh recycled black and white, Salome receiving the head, eleven-year old eyes staring. 

He imagines her, hungry like that, pretty, hands grasping, eyes like steel, unbreakable. Asking for his head.

His tongue reaches for the cut in his mouth, probes it. He tastes salt.

Guinevere had asked him, over the phone, then over Instagram DMs, then in person, then again on Instagram, why he rejoined rugby. And truthfully, he doesn't know. His skin got too tight, kind of. Or like his brain got too full. 

He'd started going out on runs at night, long runs, legs pumping, breath rattling in his throat, his mouth tasting like blood, streetlights streaking over his head. Two, three AM. He'd told Guinevere about this, and she'd said, firstly, Ugh, imagine being able to go out at night and not worry about safety, straight white male. And he'd laughed, because she was teasing him, knowing he was only one of those three things. And then she had said, Christ, what's wrong with you?

He had looked up at her. He had been lying on his bedspread, while she was trying to hit a hacky-sack she had found in the back of closet back and forth between her elbows. She was wearing a big sweatshirt and leggings, and her nails were ten smooth blue ovals, her hair falling over her shoulders. She’d turned around and looked at him, holding the hacky-sack in her hand.

He’d thrown up his arms in a gesture of general helplessness. 

You shouldn’t do that, she’d said. Are you sleeping?

He’d made a sound indicating ambivalence.

And I can’t, I dunno, I can’t focus on stuff, he’d said. It’s like, I’m growing, but my body isn’t. Or my brain is too loud. You know?

No.

Her face- her face, round, pink and white- glared reproachfully at him, brows drawn together. God, every time I think I have problems, you come up with something weirder.

He’d laughed.

But like. Why? She’d sat down on the corner of his bed, her folded legs touching his side. Like, you don’t just go out and run for hours at night for no reason.

He’d looked back at the ceiling, where there was a long crack running through it, and a postcard of a Gentileschi painting stuck up with blu-tack in the corner. 

What could he tell her? That he was having dreams, long, formless, pink dreams, dreams of the texture of skin, the bones of her shoulder, her hands with their smooth nails. Her mouth, open, soft and pliant. Warmth under his hands, her stomach, her breasts. That he would wake up, and stare at the blackness of his small, shitty room, his clothes all over the floor and crumbs on his bed, and he would look at his own hands, and try not to think about how small her wrists are. 

That sometimes he would sit in the backseat and watch her in the passenger seat, watch her hair moving slightly in the broken car heating, watch her head bent over her phone, or looking out the window, and he would wonder what she was thinking about. But he never asked, preferring her like this, almost, like an enigma, or a painting, and waiting for the moment when she would surface from her thoughts and come back to him, and turn around and say something like, “Do you ever think about Freud and get really mad?” Or, “Did you eat yet?” or, “Man, fuck the sun!”

Or that sometimes when he was early to school, he would lock his bike and then wander up to the spot by the Band room where they usually sat. There were a couple of low, carpeted steps, and then further down the hallway, a bank of lockers. Sometimes he would stand just out of sight for a little bit behind the lockers, watching her, doing something like eating a muffin or rolling her eyes at Arthur or going over her notes. Ad he would stand there, feeling absolutely reprehensible, feeling like the biggest creep in the world, watching his best friend from the shadows like some sort of greasy masturbating freak, but he would stand there anyway. And sometimes Arthur would bend down and kiss her, and she would turn her head and kiss him back. And this was the best part, when this happened, when he watched them kiss, lips sliding carefully together. She disapproved of PDA on principle, she was actually a very private person, but when school wasn’t in yet and there weren’t any teachers or rugby teammates around, sometimes she would kiss him for a minute or two. 

And he always looked forward to that, a horrible, bloody glee rising in his throat, when they kissed. It hurt so much his teeth ached. It ruined his day, inevitably. Her eyes closed, eyelashes against her cheek, hands still closed gently around her pen, nose pressed into his cheek. Arthur would put his big square hand on the spot where her waist curved in, slim and gentle, and sometimes she would smile into the kiss, her cheek rising, and then nudge him gently, and give him a fond-annoyed look, for distracting her.

It hurt so much, It hurt like a missing lung. And he would cycle to school, wondering, wondering, if they would get there early today, if they would sit on the steps, if today they would kiss chastely on the mouth while she did her homework while he stood and watched. And he would get excited, thinking about this as he biked, the chance to stand behind the bank of lockers and feel like nothing, feel like a pathetic piece of shit, watching them together.

And later he would have Gym, and he would throw himself against the turf, legs thudding on the frozen ground, throat scraping raw, and then he would go home and soon his bed would be throwing him out, into the black street, and he would be running, running, in circles around the same neighbourhood where they grew up, before everything got so weird and messed up between them.

gwenjamin: So like you still have not given me ANY kind of answer as to WHY you rejoined rugby after a YEAR

gwenjamin: HELLOOOO

gwenjamin: I can see ur reading these shithead

His gym teacher had cornered him, one day after class, as he gulped water, his body pulsing like one open nerve. 

Lancelot, I know you’ve said no, multiple times, to coming back to the rugby team. But, I mean. 

You don’t have to join, I can’t force you. But could you think about it again? I mean, what’s the use of running like that if you can’t beat anyone at it, right?

Lancelot had stared dully at him. The coach was already turning away when he’d said, Fine.

Fine, he’d said again. I’ll join.

The coach had looked back at him. Oh. He’d blinked. Really?

Yeah.

“Excuse me? Mr Du Lac?”

“Oh. Sorry?”

“Can you please tell your father you’ll be suspended for seven days?” The principal looks warily at his father, who has smoke coming out of his ears.

“Oh.” He turns to his dad. “Uh, j’ne peux pas aller à l’ecole pour” (he thinks about making it ten or fifteen, just taking some time off, his principal wouldn’t know better, but he doesn’t) “sept jours.”

“Sept jours, vraiment? Une semaine?”

“Oui.”

“Calices de Crisse de tabarnak de ciboire de testament… fucking osti…” His dad rubs his eyebrows, emitting a faint smell of burning.

“Um.” says the principal, having only picked up ‘fucking’. “Yes. We’re sorry, Mr Du Lac, but we have a zero-tolerance policy for fighting on school grounds. And we’ll be having Lancelot speak to the guidance counselor once a week when he comes back. Usually, students use the time off to think about their actions and reflect. And we have some assignments for Lancelot to submit if he wishes to return to school.” He slides a bunch of stapled paper across the table, and Lancelot looks at it dully. 

Question 1. In your own words, why are you on disciplinary leave?  
Question 2. How will you work to ensure you are not placed on disciplinary leave in the future?  
All the way to Question 12, on page four, Describe how you will work to make the school a safer and happier place.

The principal looks expectantly at him, waiting for the translation. “Uh.” He really wants to not be here anymore. “Uh, j’suis mauvais, j’dois écrire un tas de shit.”

His dad drives him home, still swearing under his breath. 

He sits, flopped against the headrest, watching the snow catch and melt against the car windows. __

____

__The snow flurries outside, storms and eddies, dancing like the skirts of a girl two thousand years ago. ____

___The funny thing is the teacher had told them the story wrong. Salome wasn’t a witch, or evil, or anything. She had danced, it had pleased Herod, he had said, I’ll give you anything. And her mother had said, the head of John the Baptist. Salome’s family had wanted him dead because they had beef with him. So there was no Salome, chin tilted up, laughing, eyes like a striking snake. There was just Salome, dancing, hot, talented, barefoot, and her mother pushing her towards a knife. A girl being given a bag, a bag with a sick, bloody weight to it, something she never asked for._ _ _

___Can she still be Salome? Guinevere wouldn’t ask for somebody’s head just because somebody told her to. She wouldn’t have danced in the first place._ _ _

___And he shouldn’t think of her in this way anyway. She isn’t Salome, she’s a real person. She’s constantly complaining about this kind of thing in the old books he likes to read, women being put on pedestals, women being compared to flowers and sunsets, women as bodies without heads. She’ll hunch over his shoulder and go, 1984? 1984? Jesus, you’re pretentious. Also, God that book made me sick, like it’s going along fine and then that hot sexy, like, 25-year-old falls in love with this old guy, like God, George Orwell, go be horny somewhere else.  
And then he would lift his book and smack her lightly in the nose with it._ _ _

___She isn’t Salome. She’s Guinevere. But that white-faced girl, the monstrous, ruined flesh on the plate, her expression- curiosity, disgust, pride, guilt, fear- he can’t stop thinking about it. The girl, taking, resenting, the ruin of the head._ _ _

___So he played the rugby game. He put the blue uniform on, Arthur dressing next to him, skin glowing healthy._ _ _

___“Man, I’m so excited about this. I’m so happy, honestly. This is,” Arthur searched around for the right word. “Lit.” He accentuated this pronouncement with two sweeps of deodorant to his armpits._ _ _

___Lancelot snorted. “Not what that means, really.”_ _ _

___“It’s lit, it’s lit. We’re gonna kill CCC, actually murder them, and go to jail for the rest of our lives. Together.” Arthur says, cheerfully, tugging his CAPTAIN uniform on over his blonde hair. “Hell yeah.”_ _ _

___“I’ll go to juvie, actually, I’m still seventeen.” Lancelot says. He can’t find his other knee pad._ _ _

___“Aw, well, we can, like, Shawshank Redemption our way outta there and go live in Mexico.” The Shawshank Redemption is his favourite movie._ _ _

___“Just so long as I don’t have to swim through any poop tunnels.” The Shawshank Redemption is not Lancelot’s favourite movie._ _ _

___“Would you not swim through a poop tunnel for me? Am I not deserving of some poop?”_ _ _

___“I would swim through poop for no-one. Sorry.”_ _ _

___“Our friendship is over.” Arthur says happily. He pops in a mouth guard, slaps Lancelot on the shoulder. “‘Ets ‘et ‘em!”_ _ _

___This would be so much easier if he didn’t like Arthur._ _ _

___So they jog out on the field, parents and friends and girlfriends cheering, and there’s a gold and blue dot that is Guinevere that he does not look at._ _ _

___And they play, and the ball flies up and Lancelot is under it, under it, and then three people run straight over him, and he’s down, ground flying up to the back of his head, crack, and he lies prone for a moment as the night sky and white spotlights wash over his head._ _ _

___“GET UP, BITCH!” Gawain gallops past him._ _ _

___He stands up, staggers, and is upright. His head hurts and his knees are scraped, and his legs and arms are moving again, carrying him into the scrum, and he’s in, pushing, legs and elbows hard and bruising against his. He scrabbles for the ball with his fingernails, jaw clenched in concentration, the blue ball among the writhing bodies of boys, and he’s got it, and someone else lands on the back of his neck._ _ _

___“Ungh.” he says, to the grass next to his mouth. A whistle, and the boy climbs off him._ _ _

___“Up, up, up!” Arthur slaps his back. He pushes up on his hands and knees, and is standing, again, somehow. Arthur jogs back into line, and he follows him._ _ _

___Arthur looks at him out of the corner of his eye. “Bro.” Arthur touches his lip._ _ _

___Lancelot raises his hand. When it comes away, there’s a smear of blood on his fingers. He licks his lip, and it stings. He must have bitten through it when he was scrumming._ _ _

___“You got killed in there.” Arthur says plainly, blonde brows drawn. “If you want you can take five, we’ll get Tor on. It’s your first game of the season.”_ _ _

___The blood is in his mouth, hot, salty. His knees are shaking, a little, and his heart is throbbing, pushing up into his throat. He can feel raw scrapes on his knees, his palms. The white lights on the field burn like lime in the rims of his eyes._ _ _

___Arthur puts a hand on the back of his neck. “First game’s always the roughest. Yeah?”_ _ _

___Salome, Salome, he thinks, Salome and the ruined head. His hands have dirt under the nails. Salome and the death under her feet. He can hear a deep, bone-level roaring, like a sea pulling him out, rocks clattering against the shore. His teeth hurt, and he opens his mouth._ _ _

___“No.” He says raspily. He shrugs off Arthur’s hand. He feels bright, red, burning, like a cut in salt water. “No, I’m good.”_ _ _

___“Okay, if you say so. Try to take Agravain, the kid with the manbun. He’s fit as fuck but you’ve got height on him.” Arthur claps him on the back._ _ _

___“Kay.”_ _ _

___They rush again, and he dodges for Agravain, who’s got his head down, but Lancelot can see his sandy hair. Who the fuck wears a manbun?_ _ _

___He pushes on Agravain’s shoulders, checks him hard and too close, stepping on his feet. Agravain is short, muscular, long bandy arms with broad square hands, and he grabs Lancelot and pulls him down. Lancelot’s head hits Agravain’s collarbone, and he feels the cords of muscle in his arms, hot with exertion. He scrambles up, his elbow mashing Agravain’s stomach. It’s a dirty move, and it wasn’t an accident, but he can make it look like it was._ _ _

___“Huh!” Agravain says, and lies gasping, immobile as a caught fish._ _ _

___“Hey! Fucker!” Another boy at his side shoves him, and he throws his hands up._ _ _

___“I was just getting up- he pulled me-”_ _ _

___Agravain scrambles up, backs away a few paces, spitting. “Can’t do that shit, bro, can’t fucking do that, cheating fuck-”_ _ _

___“I didn’t do shit.” Lancelot says, his head burning, face hot. His hands twitch, and he feels a laugh bubbling in his throat._ _ _

___They get back in rows, scramble again, row, scramble. Lancelot pushes, is thrown each time, and each time he edges a little closer. He steps on Agravain’s hand with his cleat, he yanks on his stupid little bun. He wants to really fuck up that kid, get his hands in his face, feel a bruise form. He feels nervous, twitchy, he wants to shout. Agravain looks at him, eyes white-edged with fury, and Lancelot grins like a wolf._ _ _

___They gather for half-time, and Lancelot is turned around when Gawain runs up and grabs him around the shoulders, nearly buckling Lancelot’s spine with his weight._ _ _

___“Holy SHIT! You messing with that CCC kid, oh he’s so pissed, that little bitch, hahahaha-”_ _ _

___“You might be pressing too hard, dude.” Arthur says. “Don’t get carded.”_ _ _

___“I won’t.”_ _ _

___Gawain releases him, but keeps his arms loose around his shoulders. “Little biiiiiiitch,” he sings in a high tone. “Not you, him.”_ _ _

___Arthur says a bunch of stuff about strategy and they chug water. Lancelot splashes it on his face so it beads in his eyelashes. It gets up his nose._ _ _

___He looks towards the stands, and Guinevere is there, with her blanket. She’s going on her phone, her white-blonde head bent, her narrow shoulders up, tense. He worries the cut on his lip with his tongue, probing it, feeling the salt sting of the blood._ _ _

___God, this is good. This is a good fucking sport. Why didn’t he do this earlier?_ _ _

___Half’s over, and they’re back on the field, jogging gazelle-like, slapping their knees. Lancelot connects eyes with Agravain across the field. He’s got a scrape on his cheekbone, and his eyes are two pinholes._ _ _

___Arthur grabs the scruff of his neck. “Don’t do it.” he says in his ear. “I didn’t wanna be mad in front of the team. You’re not doing it.”_ _ _

___Lancelot shrugs his shoulders up to his ears. “Wasn’t gonna do shit. If he wants to start soemthing with me-”_ _ _

___“If he starts something with you lie down and take it. I don’t care. I don’t care.”_ _ _

___“Fine, dad. Jesus Christ.”_ _ _

___Arthur looks at him, blue eyes round and tired and endlessly concerned and supportive and patient and long-suffering, and Lancelot feels the sea roaring, the shucking pull of the tide against the beach, and he’s swept out._ _ _

___The tide pulls him out into the pitch, his legs tumbling out from beneath him, and Agravain is in front of him, his head driving into his stomach, and he’s on his back on the pitch for the third time, air washing over his body, but this time he’s up again, pushing against Agravain, using his height, bearing down on him._ _ _

___“The fuck is wrong with you? The fuck?” Agravain slaps his shoulders, and Lancelot knocks his arms away._ _ _

___“Fuck’s wrong with you? Fuck’s wrong with you? I didn’t even touch you, didn’t touch you-”_ _ _

___Agravain’s teammates are grabbing his arms, pushing Lancelot but not getting too close, and the other Caerleon players are swarming up._ _ _

___“You wanna go? You wanna go?” Agravain says, chin jutting up._ _ _

___“Yeah, I’ll go right now, I’ll go-’_ _ _

___Arthur’s face pushes in front of his, big hands on his shoulders. “Hey! Hey! Hey, hey, no, no.” His mouth is a straight line, his eyes the blue of iron. He’s shorter than Lancelot, but his face is an inch away, his eyes moving as he tries to capture Lancelot’s stare._ _ _

___“No, no. This isn’t what we’re doing. Hey! Look at me.”_ _ _

___Lancelot looks at him._ _ _

___“Not what we’re doing, this is not what we’re doing. We’re almost done the match. We’re having a clean game. What are we having?”_ _ _

___Arthur’s hands grip his shoulders, crushing his sockets. Lancelot keeps his jaw fused shut._ _ _

___“What are we having?” Arthur barks._ _ _

___Lancelot slides his gaze down to the turf. “A clean game.”_ _ _

___“Got it.” Arthur stares at him, a single punch of a stare, and then moves back. The other boys fall away._ _ _

___Arthur says something to the ref, and they’re back playing. The ball’s in Lancelot’s hands, slippery, and then it’s not. He gets a slick of mud down the side of his head. His heart hammers, constantly, even when he’s not in game._ _ _

___They finish- it’s Caerleon’s. Gawain grabs him again, tries to pick him up, large and meaty and yelling delightedly about bitches. Yvain, Balan, Balin, Tor, Percival, Gaheris, and Gawain gather, slapping him on the head and hooting. Arthur grins, big and white._ _ _

___Across the pitch, Agravain is standing, alone, turned towards him._ _ _

___Arthur turns away to get him some water, and the boys turn away, and the sea is sucking, the tide rushing out again, and Lancelot is walking away, down side of the pitch, down the wide concrete hallway towards the weight room. And he didn’t know Agravain would be there- how could he? But when he turns the corner and a fist lands square in the middle of his throat he isn’t suprised._ _ _

___AGgavain’s face is white, his eyes two holes. “Fuck you!” His other hand is grabbing Lancelot’s hair, tugging his head down._ _ _

___Lancelot can’t speak, he can’t cough. He grabs up at Agravain, fingers clawing his face, trying to get at his eyes, oh fuck, but Agravain staggers back when he touches something wet and his grip on his hair releases. Lancelot grabs up and pushes on his forehead with one had, the other on his shoulder, hauling down and using his surprise to send him sprawling, Lancelot on top, on the concrete. Agravain’s knee knifes up into Lancelot’s gut, blooming pain, and Agravain pushes up with his other hand, cracking it into his cheekbone, and it bursts pink and wet behind his eye. It’s not enough to get him off him, though, and Lancelot snaps his fist down into the red round dish of Agravain’s face, and Agravain says, “Uh!”_ _ _

___Agravain’s hands are crawling up- fuck, he forgot about his hands- they’re clawing his face, one finger in the precious nerves of his eye, and he reels back, and Agravain uses this, kneeing him up and now Lancelot’s down, back on the hard cold, and he can’t see. There’s another shattering pain on his mouth, and he feels the hotness of blood. He reaches up, fists trying to connect, but there’s just air._ _ _

___He registers arms around his waist, other hands grabbing his wrists. The hallway is full of boys._ _ _

___Arthur is here, in the hallway. His eyes are blue. “What the fuck!”_ _ _

___And Guinevere is there, her blanket gripped in her arms, looking at him, her round pink face cold with surprise. He wonders how he looks. He knows only one of his eyes is open._ _ _

___Agravain is still looking at him with barely contained rage. Arthur is making him say sorry._ _ _

___“Sorry.” Lancelot says, and Arthur nods. Boys are grabbing his wrists, his shoulders, but Arthur’s shooing them away._ _ _

___And Guinevere walks closer, her small face terrible, her eyes like stones. And the sea pushes him out, out across the pitch, heads turning at his bloody face. Guinevere leads him by the hand to the car, the water rushing. His feet don’t move- the sea takes him there._ _ _

___“Sit down.” he says. And he does, feeling much better to have her tell him what to do. And he sits there as the car fills with briny water, as she fetches bandaids and a towel._ _ _

___“Turn your face.” He does. She touches his face with her hand, soft on his burning face. The alcohol stings._ _ _

___“Ah.” He says._ _ _

___“Don’t be a baby.” she says acidly, mouth turned down. He feels soft, pliant. He can hear his heart beating again. He feels like he’s floating._ _ _

___“What the fuck.” she says._ _ _

___“Sorry.” She holds his head in her hands, and he lets her take a little bit of its weight, letting his neck slump. The cloth in her hand scrapes against his open skin. Her palm is so soft. He closes his eyes._ _ _

___“You don’t have to- You didn’t do anything to me.” she spits._ _ _

___“Open your mouth more.” He does, and she tilts his head. “I think you cut the inside of your mouth on your teeth.”_ _ _

___He doesn’t say anything. He looks at the soft down on the side of her jaw where her ear is._ _ _

___“Open your mouth a bit.”_ _ _

___He does, and her fingers reach inside with a bit of gauze daubed in alcohol. He hangs his jaw open, and she touches, two fingers carefully, to the inside of his cheek, and he feels a needle of pain._ _ _

___The car’s heater is on, and it’s warm and claustrophobic. The steam is building up on the windows._ _ _

___He looks at her, and her eyes are grey and hard and serious. Her hair falls softly around her face._ _ _

___Her fingers are still in his mouth, a thin line of pain where the alcohol is touching the cut, sterilizing. He feels it radiating out over his whole body, his hands and his feet and his knees thrumming gently with the chemical sting._ _ _

___“Don’t look at me like that.” she says, eyes flinty._ _ _

___He closes his eyes. She draws her fingers out of his mouth, and they bump the swollen cut on his mouth. “Ah.”_ _ _

___“Sorry.” she says, despite how angry he knows she is._ _ _

___And before he can think of the things he is and isn’t allowed to do, he catches her hand in his and holds it, there, against his bleeding lip. Her thumb digs in._ _ _

___The inside of his lids is a dull red. He doesn’t open his eyes. He holds her hand there, against his mouth, and she doesn’t move it away._ _ _

___He doesn’t look. He doesn’t look. He presses his eyes closed, tightly, white and blue spots clouding his vision. She breathes in, once, shuddering._ _ _

___Her hand is thin and delicate and warm, impossibly corporeal, a caught bird in his palm. His lip is like a fissure, like a volcano erupting. He feels a thin stream of blood run down onto his chin. She is completely motionless. The only thing truly alive is the rattle of the car heater and the slow thin movement of the inside of his body into the cold outside._ _ _

___There’s only them, Lancelot and Guinevere, and the little bit of his blood on her hand. He can hear her breathing very fast like a rabbit._ _ _

___“Lance.” She says, her voice slow and ragged._ _ _

___He opens his eyes. Her eyes are wet and narrowed, clenched tightly almost shut. Her mouth is pinched. He can’t tell if she’s crying._ _ _

___He loosens his grip on her hand, but she doesn’t move it. Her fingers are white where he was holding them, and her thumb is rimmed with blood. He swallows._ _ _

___There are so many things that are not allowed, that he can’t think._ _ _

___He lowers his face, presses the side of her hand against it. He keeps his eyes trained down, looking down at her other hand clenched into a fist on her lap, the towel crumpled into a wad. He keeps very still, her hand warm and frozen against his cheek._ _ _

___“Sorry.” he says, his voice thin._ _ _

___“You know.” She clears her throat. “You know, it’s- we can’t.”_ _ _

___“Yeah.”_ _ _

___She takes her hand away, and he feels a cold spot on the side of his face. She draws it back, touches her own lip reflexively, leaving a thin crescent of his blood. She wipes it away with her other knuckle. SHe inhales deeply, a little damply. “Huh.”_ _ _

___It’s so hot in the car. The heat is pressing against his skin. She places her hands back in her lap._ _ _

___“There’s no good end to this. For me.” he says, to her hands, the one clenched one, the one bloodied one. He doesn’t know what he’s saying._ _ _

___“Yeah.” she says softly._ _ _

___Outside the car, it begins to rain._ _ _

___She turns. “He’s come back.”_ _ _

___It’s Arthur, jogging up to the car. Lancelot leans back against the headrest, and Arthur opens the door, cold wet air rushing in._ _ _

___“Hey, guys. Lance. How ya doin’, buddy?”_ _ _

___“Fine. I’m sorry.”_ _ _

___“Yeah. Agravain’s family isn’t gonna press charges, but you shouldn’t play any more games for the league for the season.”_ _ _

___“Okay.”_ _ _

___Lancelot gets up and moves to the back so Arthur can drive, and he watches Guinevere’s fine yellow hair flutter in the hot wind of the car heater. On the way home, the rain turns to snow, and she swipes her hand on the fogged window so she can see out. There’s a dark rust ring under her fingernail still._ _ _

___They drop him off at home, where his father is standing in the doorway, phone in his hand held up accusingly. Guinevere turns, trying to catch his eye as he gets out of the car, but he doesn’t look._ _ _

___His father yells at him, and he stands, looking at his feet. And then he goes to bed, and stares at his hands in the dark, and at some point, when it’s quiet and dead out like nobody in the world ever existed, he’s out in the snow under the black sky, feeling the cold dry air like static over his skin._ _ _

___And he feels the sea, rushing in, rushing out, but he doesn’t move this time._ _ _

**Author's Note:**

> The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you  
> And that you are standing in the doorway  
> And you smile as you ease the gun from my hand  
> I am frozen with joy right where I stand.  
> The world glows its slide underneath your hair.  
> 40 miles from Atlanta, this is nowhere.
> 
> Going to Georgia, the Mountain Goats
> 
> (you know what's the most delightful thing about the arthurian canon? there's no canon. it's just a bunch of authors. including me, now. they're texting each other and everybody is sad! it's canon! hahahaha!)


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